I definitely feel like the UI choices made in these "agents" are based on the fantasy of managers and executives (and maybe tech-optimists) more than they are the ones that actual software engineers would choose -- because they present a world in which they take over completely in a mostly unguided fashion.

I want something far more interactive that leaves me far more in control and forces me to be responsible for the choices.

For the last two months as I've been out of paid work I've been working like mad on my open source project, and fell into the pattern of heavily using Claude Code and some of the results have been amazing but some I have let my judgment and oversight lapse and come back later with a completely "WTF did it do here?" surprise.

That shouldn't be allowed to happen. A responsible SWE culture would demand that these tools engage in a way that encourages heavy oversight review and engagement.

Almost everybody does mandatory code review process these days (they didn't earlier in my career) ... despite its lower velocity... because of lessons learned -- and yet now we're allowing agent coding to produce large quantities of code that doesn't even lend itself to review by the party in charge of producing it.